I don't know how you can completely discount the possibility of war and say it is 'BS'. Maybe you are just letting your own personal biases and opinions colour your thinking. I remember the last time Russia and the Ukraine were embroiled in conflict and we saw significant rises in the gold price. I don't think you'll see gold start to move until Russian troops and tanks have crossed the border.
The pandemic and now inflation are the game-changer for the Fed. First we heard inflation was 'transitory', now we are told that inflation will abate by Q4. It's all more jawboning from people who got it wrong time and time again. You can suppress interest rates and 'print' money with impunity, yes you can.....until some real world event like a pandemic comes along and trips you up. Murphy's Law says what can go wrong will go wrong. Now the Fed is in an impossible situation with the fed funds rate at 0.25% and no room to move. They put themselves in this position. What is the situation? It's very bad, put it that way. So I think the best thing is to be diversified and have low to no debt.
I will stick to my knitting and keep the faith with gold. USD 1835 an oz is pretty fantastic given the dire predictions of the trolls and gold bears over the years in this forum. We were supposed to be at USD 800 an oz, then we were never supposed to get past USD 1413 an oz. For anyone to say that gold hasn't proven to be a store of value over this period of shocking central bank interventions then I think they must have rocks in their head.
